Hey! Good Evening!

"Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. What will you do on the day of reckoning, when disaster comes from afar? To whom will you run for help? Where will you leave your riches?"

You can pray, but God is on our side. Not the God of the Pope and of the Catholic bishops, who have condemned us. Not even the God of the Southern Baptists or of evangelical Christian Franklin Graham, who has embraced and excused our president’s every flagrant sin before now, but who has finally drawn a line here. Not the God who tells us to welcome the stranger. That God is gone now. No, our God is one of vengeance and of holy prosperity. Our God “has ordained the government for his purposes,” as Attorney General Jeff Sessions and press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders pointed out last week. Our mission is sacred.

Probably my favorite summer was when I was four years old, and the government came and dragged me off to summer camp over the terrified objection of my parents. https://t.co/FT47UEN4r4

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is a United Methodist, and he is also the face of the Trump administration's widely condemned policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border. In a Friday statement slamming the policy as "a shocking violation of the spirit of the Gospel," the United Methodist Church registered its dissent to Sessions' use of the Bible to defend the separations:

"The Christ we follow would have no part in ripping children from their mothers' arms or shunning those fleeing violence. It is unimaginable that faith leaders even have to say that these policies are antithetical to the teachings of Christ."

The statement explicitly called out Sessions as a "fellow United Methodist," asking him to reverse the decision to split up families.

I couldn't get through the audio. I include it solely for documentary purposes. Feel free not listen and to assume that it is awful, about what you would expect of recordings from other Nazi concentration camps.

The desperate sobbing of 10 Central American children, separated from their parents one day last week by immigration authorities at the border, makes for excruciating listening. Many of them sound like they’re crying so hard, they can barely breathe. They scream “Mami” and “Papá” over and over again, as if those are the only words they know. ...

An audio recording obtained by ProPublica adds real-life sounds of suffering to a contentious policy debate that has so far been short on input from those with the most at stake: immigrant children. More than 2,300 of them have been separated from their parents since April, when the Trump administration launched its “zero tolerance” immigration policy, which calls for prosecuting all people who attempt to illegally enter the country and taking away the children they brought with them. More than 100 of those children are under the age of 4. The children are initially held in warehouses, tents or big box stores that have been converted into Border Patrol detention facilities.

Condemnations of the policy have been swift and sharp, including from some of the administration’s most reliable supporters. It has united religious conservatives and immigrant rights activists, who have said that “zero tolerance” amounts to “zero humanity.” Democratic and Republican members of Congress spoke out against the administration’s enforcement efforts over the weekend. Former first lady Laura Bush called the administration’s practices “cruel” and “immoral,” and likened images of immigrant children being held in kennels to those that came out of Japanese internment camps during World War II. And the American Academy of Pediatrics has said the practice of separating children from their parents can cause the children “irreparable harm.” ...

Still, the administration had stood by it. President Donald Trump blames Democrats and says his administration is only enforcing laws already on the books, although that’s not true. There are no laws that require children to be separated from their parents, or that call for criminal prosecutions of all undocumented border crossers. Those practices were established by the Trump administration. ...

The audio obtained by ProPublica [...] was recorded last week inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection detention facility. The person who made the recording asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. That person gave the audio to Jennifer Harbury, a well-known civil rights attorney who has lived and worked for four decades in the Rio Grande Valley along the Texas border with Mexico. Harbury provided it to ProPublica. She said the person who recorded it was a client who “heard the children’s weeping and crying, and was devastated by it.”

A US Border Patrol officer used his SUV to strike Paulo Remes, a 34-year-old Native American man, in front of his grandparents’ home Thursday, and then quickly drove away. Video footage taken by Remes capturing the hit and run has been shared and viewed over one million times on social media, causing outrage. In the video, Remes is seen walking toward his grandparents’ home as the vehicle barrels towards him, striking him as he rolls onto the hood and hits the ground. Remes can be heard reading out the license plate number as the vehicle drives away. ...

Remes is a member of the Tohono O’odham Nation, whose 62-mile reservation straddles the US-Mexico border in southern Arizona near Tucson and the Mexican state of Sonora. The tribe, which consists of about 34,000 registered members with approximately 2,000 living in Mexico, has aggressively protested Trump’s proposed border wall which would divide the tribe and its lands. Many tribal members view the hit and run as part of a long history of agents acting with total impunity on their lands, recalling the 2003 killing of a Tohono O’odham teenager, Bennett Patricio, when he was struck by the vehicle of Border Patrol agent, Cody Rouse. A federal judge cleared Rouse in 2006 of any wrongdoing in the accident. ...

The Tohono O’odham are seen as a stone in the shoe of Washington as its members have historically moved freely across the current international boundary for religious ceremonies, medical appointments, or visits with relatives. When the border was drawn across their lands in 1853, the Tohono O’odham were not offered the possibility of dual citizenship. This latest incident only further points to the fascistic character of US immigration agents, who just yesterday caused the deaths of five undocumented immigrants when they pursued an SUV carrying 14 people at deadly speeds of over 100 miles per hour, causing it to crash and eject 12 people from the vehicle near Big Wells, Texas.

County Sheriff Marion Boyd defended the chase, saying it was “good police work” that started the chase. The impunity with which ICE operates is part of a deliberate and systematic strategy to terrorize those seeking a better life in the United States.

Beating authoritarianism isn’t as simple as you think. It’s even simpler. Yes, really. Not easy, mind you, convenient, comfortable, a walk in the park. But simple, as in undo the cause, undo the effect. ...

Authoritarianism arises in broken societies. Just how broken is America? The average American doesn’t have $500 in emergency savings, his life expectancy’s fallng, he’ll never retire, he lives with a mountain of debt, and his income’s shrinking. Inequality is higher than ancient Rome, trust has collapsed, social bonds have imploded along with towns, villages, and cities, some of which don’t have basic utilities like water, the polity is badly dysfunctional, and so on. America is a portrait of the rich world’s first failed state. We have never once seen authoritarianism arise in a working society — one where people are prosperous. I’ll get to why. First, go ahead and think about. Weimar Germany? Of course not — it was badly broken, thus Hitler. Post-Soviet Russia? Nope — life was plummeting downwards, hence Putinism. China? Nope — there were mass famines, hence Maoism. Authoritarianism arises in broken societies — there is absolutely no need to overthink it, which is a kind of denial, but to only to see: is the society we live in broken?

People turn to authoritarians for a sense of safety and strength when they feel weak and defeated. ... People are often very happy to trade freedom for all that it has cost them — prosperity, stability, belonging, meaning, security. Step by step, the authoritarian makes them trade away their humanity and decency for his protection and strength too — telling them that is the only way to be strong. ... That is how a society gets to kids in camps in less than two years. But how is that vicious cycle to be reversed?

The way to beat authoritarianism is to offer people a transformative new social contract. When I say “social contract”, because the Ezra Kleins of the world have reduced you to thinking that means something like a minor-league extension to some kind of ineffectual policy program or bill, you maybe roll your eyes. But policy is not what a social contract is made of at all. A social contract is about institutions. What are institutions? ICE is an institution. DHS is an institution. When we say, “abolish ICE!”, we are beginning to call for a new social contract, only we don’t know it. So let’s go all the way. To offer a new social contract — or a new New Deal, or a New Grand Bargain, whatever you want to call it — means a new set of institutions that repair a broken society. America doesn’t need an ICE and a DHS, really. What it needs is an NHS, a National Health Services, a BBC, a good national public broadcaster, instead of a CNN and MSNBC, who failed abysmally at safeguarding the public interest from authoritarianism. It needs a Social Pension System, not just “social security”. It needs an American Investment Bank — not just Goldman Sachs — to invest in broken towns and cities and lives. It needs all the above and more — but the point is that they are new institutions, which fundamentally restructure society, by offering people a new social contract. ...

Authoritarianism ultimately boils down to a plan for total institutional reconstruction. Total — along totalitarian lines. Reconstruction — ICE becomes something like a Gestapo, DHS becomes something like an SS. I exaggerate a little to make a point. The authoritarians have a radical plan to reconstruct society. Not a very thoughtful one — one based on hate and spite and fear. But the problem is that no one else offers an opposing one. That is the difference between “resistance” and opposition. Opposition says — radical change is coming, one way or the other, in a broken society. Here is the positive, beneficial kind, that creates the future, not just rewinds to the barbarities of the past. ... And that is where America is now. It is overthinking authoritarianism, and badly. No one is offering a new New Deal, a new Grand Bargain, and so there is nothing to galvanize people, inspire them, awaken them, so that they rise up not just against authoritarians, but for themselves, their democracy, their society.

The U.N. spokesman said on Monday that tens of thousands of residents have fled the fighting along Yemen’s western coastline where Yemeni fighters backed by a Saudi-led coalition are engaged in fierce battles with Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.

Stephane Dujarric, the spokesman for the U.N. Secretary-General, told reporters on Monday that about 5,200 families, or around 26,000 people, have fled the fighting and sought safety within their own districts or in other areas in Hodeida governorate.

“The number is expected to increase as hostilities continue,” he said.

While a Saudi Arabia coalition enabled by the United States military bombs the city of Hodeida, Yemen, which is the main entry for shipments of food, senators demand the Pentagon end its secrecy around the scope of involvement by U.S. forces. The New York Times reported in May that a “team of about a dozen Green Berets” are helping to “locate and destroy caches of ballistic missiles and launch sites that Houthi rebels are using to attack Riyadh and other Saudi cities”—a revelation that contradicts Pentagon claims that U.S. military assistance is “limited to aircraft refueling, logistics, and general intelligence sharing.”

Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) wrote in a letter to Defense Secretary James Mattis, “We are concerned that in the midst of a Senate effort to exercise its constitutional authority to end unauthorized hostilities—including U.S. targeting and refueling assistance for Saudi-led airstrikes against Yemen’s Houthis—the Pentagon may have concealed key information from members of Congress regarding the full extent of on-the-ground U.S. military participation in the Saudi coalition-led war.” ...

The letter, sent on June 15, came two days after an offensive on Hodeida was launched. It was widely condemned as an assault on one of the last remaining lifelines for Yemenis already suffering from one of the worst famines in the world. Similarly, U.S. Representatives Mark Pocan (D-WI), Justin Amash (R-MI), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Thomas Massie (R-KY), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Walter Jones (R-NC), and Ted Lieu (D-CA) sent a nearly identical letter on June 13 that urged Mattis to stop the coalition’s assault on Hodeida.

At least 55 representatives in the House, led by Pocan, have demanded to know the White House’s “legal justification” for “escalating U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen—a war that’s never been authorized by Congress.” The Office of Legal Counsel and White House has apparently never provided members of Congress with any basis for why U.S. participation in the war in Yemen is authorized. It certainly is not covered by the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force that applies to al Qaida.

The War Powers Act gives Congress the authority to force debate and a floor vote to withdraw U.S. military forces from “unauthorized hostilities.” Sanders, Lee, and Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) led an effort in March to force a vote, but ten Senate Democrats helped the Republican majority shield the Trump administration from a debate on withdrawing U.S. military forces. Senator Bob Corker (R-TN), chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was livid that a handful of senators would attempt to challenge the Trump administration’s abuse of power in a manner that circumvented the committee he chairs. Yet, so far, the committee has offered little to no oversight of military operations launched under President Barack Obama and expanded by Trump.

Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces have captured the airport at Hodeidah and have started preparations for the more complex task of capturing the city and its port nine miles (15km) to the north. The port is critical to the supply of aid to the rest of the famine-struck country.

Confirmation that the airport on the southern outskirts of the city had been seized after three days of fighting came from both TV pictures and eyewitness accounts. At least 40 Houthi fighters who had held the airport were killed, but most retreated into the city, preparing to fight a potentially intense street-by-street campaign that could endanger tens of thousands of civilians.

The military advance came after the UN special envoy for Syria, Martin Griffiths, left the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, after failing to broker a ceasefire that would have seen the port taken under UN control. Griffiths provided a closed-door briefing to the UN security council by satellite link on Monday, but departed Sana’a without speaking to the press.

The security council has been divided over whether to demand a ceasefire, and Russia, its current chair, gave a downbeat assessment of the chances for a diplomatic breakthrough after the meeting.

The United States and South Korea have cancelled a major military exercise scheduled for August, a week after Donald Trump said he would end the “war games” in a surprise concession during his summit with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un. The Pentagon said Operation Ulchi Freedom Guardian would not take place, while Washington and Pyongyang continue to discuss denuclearisation following Trump’s historic meeting with Kim in Singapore last Tuesday.

Last year’s drill was held over 11 days and involved 17,500 US troops and 50,000 from South Korea, along with those from several other countries that fought in the 1950-53 Korean war. The cancellation came after long discussions between the secretary of state, Jim Mattis, and his counterpart in Seoul, Song Young-moo. ...

The decision does not affect two other major exercises, Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, which usually include live-fire drills with tanks, aircraft and warships and feature about 10,000 American and 200,000 South Korean troops. The drills usually take place each spring but were delayed slightly this year as a conciliatory gesture amid a lowering of inter-Korean tensions during the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

President Donald Trump made the demand for more weapons sound not only ridiculous but also implicitly racist on Monday when he announced a new branch of the military—Space Force. Speaking at a White House meeting of the National Space Council, Trump declared, "My administration is reclaiming America's heritage as the world's greatest space-faring nation," and said he urged his "administration to embrace the budding commercial space industry."

"When it comes to defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space. So important," he said. As the U.S. Air Force Space Command currently manages military operations in space, he said, "We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force — separate but equal. It is going to be something. So important," he said. ... Trump also joked that an individual making it to Mars before the U.S. would be acceptable "as long as it's an American rich person, that's good."

A Space Force is not a new idea, and Trump himself mentioned the idea of such of a military branch in March, though the administration was against a similar proposal last year. For his part, Secretary of Defense James Mattis said last year he opposed creating a new branch of military for space, though he also said last month he wants "to make the military more lethal in outer space."

Money for medicare for all? NOPE.Money to get clean water in Flint? NOPE.Money for education? NOPE.Money to stop global warming? NOPE.Money for a "space force" to combat a nonexistent threat? You bet your sweet ass.

Spain’s new Socialist government is determined to remove the remains of Francisco Franco from a vast mausoleum near Madrid and turn it into a place of “reconciliation” for a country still coming to terms with the dictator’s legacy. “There already exists an agreement in parliament, what we are going to do as a government is look for the way to apply it,” the country’s deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, told reporters.

She was referring to a non-binding motion approved last year by 198 of the 350 lawmakers in Spain’s parliament calling for Franco’s remains to be removed from the massive Valley of the Fallen mausoleum 50km (30 miles) northwest of Madrid. But the motion was ignored by the former conservative government of Mariano Rajoy.

Now the goal is to convert the site into a “place of reconciliation, of memory, for all Spaniards, and not of apology for the dictatorship,” said Socialist party spokesman Oscar Puente. rime minister Pedro Sanchez, who toppled Rajoy in a no-confidence vote on 1 June after a corruption scandal, has since made the question of what do with Franco’s remains a priority of his minority government.

In the wake of the 568-page Justice Department inspector general’s report issued Thursday, the political warfare in Washington over the role of the FBI in the 2016 elections continues to intensify. While the report provided damning information on the pro-Clinton faction in the leadership of the FBI, a television interview Thursday night shed light on the pro-Trump faction within the same agency, centered in the New York field office, the FBI’s largest and most influential office outside the agency’s headquarters in Washington.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, speaking on the Laura Ingraham program on Fox News, revealed that dissident agents in the New York office contacted him in late September 2016 and told him that the FBI had obtained a new batch of Clinton emails that could lead to the reopening of the investigation into her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state, which the FBI had closed two months earlier. Nunes described these “good FBI agents” as “whistle blowers,” but they clearly were acting as partisans of Trump and the Republican Party, contacting a leading congressional Republican who had an interest in anti-Clinton information. Moreover, Nunes did not inform his Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, underscoring the factional warfare raging through official Washington. ...

At the time, in the midst of the uproar provoked by Comey’s letter, the World Socialist Web Site wrote, “One former Justice Department official suggested that Comey was under intense pressure from within the FBI over his previous declaration that no competent prosecutor would bring charges against Clinton over her use of the private server. If true, this means that sections of the federal police agency are in open revolt against the candidate who may shortly become their nominal ‘commander-in-chief’” (see: “The FBI intervenes in the 2016 election”).

It is evident that this was precisely the case. The FBI, the political police force of the American ruling elite, became a battleground during the 2016 elections between pro-Clinton and pro-Trump factions, each seeking to make use of the agency’s ability to conduct surveillance and carry out provocations and frame-ups against the rival candidate.

Of all the silky lies being told in Washington over the findings of the FBI’s inspector general on the biased culture of those investigating Hillary Clinton’s email server, one lie seems to be ignored:

It’s the silky lie told by then-President Barack Obama. ... Obama told his silky lie when his chosen successor was Hillary Clinton. Clinton had endangered top secret information by using an unsecured, home-brew email server when she was U.S. secretary of state. Any other American who dared risk top government secrets on a basement server would have faced federal prosecution and prison. Obama’s lie was told in 2015, when Obama was asked by CBS’ Bill Plante when he learned Mrs. Clinton had used an unsecured email server. “The same time everybody else learned it, through news reports,” Obama said. He was so silky that you couldn’t even hear his tongue rustling along his teeth. He waxed on about how his administration was all about “transparency.” But Obama did not learn about Clinton’s home-brew server like “everybody else.”

According to the inspector general’s report, Obama was in fact one of 13 top government officials communicating with Clinton on her private email server, even as Clinton’s server was targeted by foreign intelligence services. According to the IG report, before former (and fired) FBI Director James Comey took it upon himself to publicly criticize Clinton (and exonerate her from a criminal charge), a draft of his public address was heavily edited. It was edited for Hillary Clinton’s benefit, to buttress the case that what she did wasn’t prosecutable. But Comey’s comments were also edited to protect someone else. The IG report discusses a key paragraph in Comey’s statement summarizing the FBI’s thinking that “hostile actors” had accessed Clinton’s server.

The paragraph, the report said, “referenced Clinton’s use of her private email for an exchange with then President Obama while in the territory of a foreign adversary. This reference was later changed to ‘another senior government official,’ and ultimately was omitted.” ... Just chew on this apiece: How could Hillary Clinton ever be prosecuted without implicating Obama, who emailed her using a pseudonym? ... Her campaign would have fallen apart immediately, and along with it, Obama’s legacy. ...

Deals were cut. Then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch met on the tarmac with Bill Clinton. Hillary Clinton was shielded from a federal grand jury. Witnesses were allowed to sit with her during questioning. Comey had already decided to clear her before the investigation was complete. ... The Mueller investigation should continue. So should the congressional inquiry into the DOJ and FBI. Americans need sunshine on all of this.

Thirty years after a former Nasa scientist sounded the alarm for the general public about climate change and human activity, the expert issued a fresh warning that the world is failing “miserably” to deal with the worsening dangers. While Donald Trump and many conservatives like to argue that climate change is a hoax, James Hansen, the 77-year-old former Nasa climate scientist, said in an interview at his home in New York that the relevant hoax today is perpetrated by those leaders claiming to be addressing the problem. ...

“All we’ve done is agree there’s a problem,” Hansen told the Guardian. “We agreed that in 1992 [at the Earth summit in Rio] and re-agreed it again in Paris [at the 2015 climate accord]. We haven’t acknowledged what is required to solve it. Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.”

Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues. There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.

Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment. “Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said. “Our lawsuit demands a reduction of 6% a year so I thought, ‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.” ...

“Poor Jim Hansen. He’s a tragic hero,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard academic who studies the history of science. “The Cassandra aspect of his life is that he’s cursed to understand and diagnose what’s going on but unable to persuade people to do something about it. We are all raised to believe knowledge is power but Hansen proves the untruth of that slogan. Power is power.”

The decision by the government of Canada to take over the Trans Mountain pipeline Expansion Project is yet another example of indigenous rights being ignored in Canada. The prime minister, Justin Trudeau, promised to do things differently than his predecessors. He promised indigenous peoples that our rights would be respected, and he has broken that promise, yet again. He promised us he would put pipeline expansion through a brand-new review, and instead the government is spending billions of dollars to buy it and, if necessary, complete and operate it over our objections.

By the way, the original pipeline carried 150,000 barrels of oil per day, which was primarily for domestic use. Today it carries 300,000 barrels, achieved by adding more pumping stations and pushing through more oil. So when the megapipe, with an estimated daily load of 800,000 barrels, is built, that capacity is only the beginning: it could double in capacity, with very little anyone could do about it.

If this pipeline is completed, these pristine waters will become the sailing grounds for more than 21,000 huge oil tankers over the next 50 years, carrying the world’s most toxic oil – diluted bitumen – from the Alberta tar sands. That is the minimum number of oil tankers; it could be more. A single incident would render the beautiful beaches of the city, surrounding islands and Vancouver Island uninhabitable. It would kill the Salish Sea and destroy our Squamish territory. All it takes is just one incident – and no one, from industry experts to the government, can guarantee that won’t happen.

Why risk it? We are told that “world-class” measures will be in place to prevent a spill and deal with one if it happens. A “world-class” standard for oil spill cleanup is that 10% to 15% is successfully recovered from the ocean. Of the remaining 85% to 90%, what doesn’t evaporate will destroy the beaches or sink to the bottom of the ocean to kill everything that now lives there, forever. That is the reality no one wants to talk about. It will destroy the Salish sea. ...

If you know this port, it has a very narrow opening, aptly called First Narrows. Medium-sized cruise ships barely fit. The current is powerful and unpredictable. For a mega-tanker it is exceedingly tight – and then they have to go through the Second Narrows before arriving at the terminal. Can they do that 21,000 times without a single incident? Why take the risk?

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Back in the day, I worked within local democratic party that had total machine control of the city. I was basically a foot soldier. I could have gotten a job as assistant basketball equipment manager at some city center and showed up to work one day a week. But alas...some thoughts from this experience.

All local establishment democrats will cheat in the primaries to various levels. That is the nature of machine politics. Factions fighting factions and no problem cheating each other. I worked inside and outside the polling places and have seen it.

This cheating indeed did happen to Bernie. By Bernie not confronting it, he basically validated the system to cheat. We saw this with the Justice Democrats before and during the primaries. I fully expect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NYC to get fully cheated, and thus the death of any viable progressive wing of the democratic party. Bernie could have shaken the democratic party to its core if he went after the cheating.

Taking away all the new people Bernie got into the democratic party, the base is what one sees at TOP. It may mouth out standard platitudes just like the gop base, but then they vote in the worst sorts of corporatists and lackies. That base is neither liberal nor progressive. Many people believe as did I that some cabal of donors and aholes illegitimately took over and was holding progressives captive. Nope.

Various pundits see Bernie as the most popular politician in the America with his ideas extremely popular. It should be apparent now that that will not translate into electoral success. Hello Nancy and Diane--welcome back to Congress. Again that base.

Bernie's legacy is in many ways the legacy of OWS--he gave language and terms to people to use for progressive change. But the politican--not the same person anymore.

@MrWebster
Hedges article and thought he was to the point and right. Sanders will not be supported in ways people may still hope. No way. I supported him, as I supported Obama, both in the beginning and their campaigns, but not for much longer. Was just too scared to say something.

So, it's "ouch" for Sanders, but not "ouch" for Hedges article, right?

ok, "ouch" for me. I didn't get the "ouch" related to the right person.

Back in the day, I worked within local democratic party that had total machine control of the city. I was basically a foot soldier. I could have gotten a job as assistant basketball equipment manager at some city center and showed up to work one day a week. But alas...some thoughts from this experience.

All local establishment democrats will cheat in the primaries to various levels. That is the nature of machine politics. Factions fighting factions and no problem cheating each other. I worked inside and outside the polling places and have seen it.

This cheating indeed did happen to Bernie. By Bernie not confronting it, he basically validated the system to cheat. We saw this with the Justice Democrats before and during the primaries. I fully expect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NYC to get fully cheated, and thus the death of any viable progressive wing of the democratic party. Bernie could have shaken the democratic party to its core if he went after the cheating.

Taking away all the new people Bernie got into the democratic party, the base is what one sees at TOP. It may mouth out standard platitudes just like the gop base, but then they vote in the worst sorts of corporatists and lackies. That base is neither liberal nor progressive. Many people believe as did I that some cabal of donors and aholes illegitimately took over and was holding progressives captive. Nope.

Various pundits see Bernie as the most popular politician in the America with his ideas extremely popular. It should be apparent now that that will not translate into electoral success. Hello Nancy and Diane--welcome back to Congress. Again that base.

Bernie's legacy is in many ways the legacy of OWS--he gave language and terms to people to use for progressive change. But the politican--not the same person anymore.

@mimi@mimi
as the needle goes in to drain the abcess at the sore point.
But I'm just an amateur observer

#4
Hedges article and thought he was to the point and right. Sanders will not be supported in ways people may still hope. No way. I supported him, as I supported Obama, both in the beginning and their campaigns, but not for much longer. Was just too scared to say something.

So, it's "ouch" for Sanders, but not "ouch" for Hedges article, right?

ok, "ouch" for me. I didn't get the "ouch" related to the right person.

my guess is that the democrats will allow just enough progressive types to win primaries to continue the fictional appearance that the party is open to progressives.

as hedges points out, bernie, no matter what intentions he went in with, has been neutralized. my guess is that the party wants to keep him around just long enough to scare off other progressive contenders and potentially viable third party challengers.

Back in the day, I worked within local democratic party that had total machine control of the city. I was basically a foot soldier. I could have gotten a job as assistant basketball equipment manager at some city center and showed up to work one day a week. But alas...some thoughts from this experience.

All local establishment democrats will cheat in the primaries to various levels. That is the nature of machine politics. Factions fighting factions and no problem cheating each other. I worked inside and outside the polling places and have seen it.

This cheating indeed did happen to Bernie. By Bernie not confronting it, he basically validated the system to cheat. We saw this with the Justice Democrats before and during the primaries. I fully expect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in NYC to get fully cheated, and thus the death of any viable progressive wing of the democratic party. Bernie could have shaken the democratic party to its core if he went after the cheating.

Taking away all the new people Bernie got into the democratic party, the base is what one sees at TOP. It may mouth out standard platitudes just like the gop base, but then they vote in the worst sorts of corporatists and lackies. That base is neither liberal nor progressive. Many people believe as did I that some cabal of donors and aholes illegitimately took over and was holding progressives captive. Nope.

Various pundits see Bernie as the most popular politician in the America with his ideas extremely popular. It should be apparent now that that will not translate into electoral success. Hello Nancy and Diane--welcome back to Congress. Again that base.

Bernie's legacy is in many ways the legacy of OWS--he gave language and terms to people to use for progressive change. But the politican--not the same person anymore.

Hope you're all doing well. Anybody headed to DC Saturday for the PPC event? I was thinking you lived nearby Joe? Anyway if anyone is there, I'll be with the Alabama contingency. I hope the crowd is so large we can't find one another, but if not I would love to visit with any of you.

sadly i'm going to miss the ppc event saturday, i'll be too far away saturday to go back to dc. if you're going to make a weekend of it, i should be back in the area sunday evening...

cool! thanks for the vid of pete with brownie and sonny.

heh, i say if the billionaires want to go to space, let's send 'em all now. B)

Hope you're all doing well. Anybody headed to DC Saturday for the PPC event? I was thinking you lived nearby Joe? Anyway if anyone is there, I'll be with the Alabama contingency. I hope the crowd is so large we can't find one another, but if not I would love to visit with any of you.

it's all good. there's nothing that the u.s. can add to a global dialogue on human rights. the u.s. has no moral standing to make criticisms of any other country and u.s. membership in such an organization makes any decision it may render suspect.

Thanks for posting the article on how he sold out long before the convention and basically puked on his supporters who gave him money that they didn't have and became the sheepdog for Her. Hedges is absolutely right. If Bernie decides to run again he won't get the support he got because people feel very betrayed by him.

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If Bernie decides to run again he won't get the support he got because people feel very betrayed by him.

some number of people probably would support a bernie candidacy again. i think that the dems would like to keep bernie around to split the progressive camp up into a variety of splinter groups before they steal the primary from him again.

Thanks for posting the article on how he sold out long before the convention and basically puked on his supporters who gave him money that they didn't have and became the sheepdog for Her. Hedges is absolutely right. If Bernie decides to run again he won't get the support he got because people feel very betrayed by him.

Sounds horrible, I know, but with all the tropical moisture drenching much of Texas and Mexico (and forecast for the next 2-3 days), a high pressure system over the prison camp means no torrential rain to wash them away or cause them to slop around in mud. Lord knows, they don't need any more bullshit!

Just saw a video of protesters in El Paso under a bright, hot sun and clear, blue sky.

Now, to get through the projected over 3 days, 7"-10" here. (And try not to read any fb comments laughing at people for being anxious or with post Harvey PTSD. I've read only ex military and females who've been raped can have PTSD. Ugh, people are so stupid, and hateful too.)

@Deja@Deja
Nope, you can't make this shit up. Also just heard that the owner of the proposed property on Emancipation, leases out 4 or 5 other properties used as "detention facilities" in Houston but they're for "older" kids and teens who were unaccompanied. 16 facilities across the state. Billions of your tax dollars per year to operate them. Dr Juan Sanchez, the CEO of detention company and his wife, listed as employee, are raking in obscene salaries as well.

That word "unaccompanied" brings up something someone on fb pointed out. In Title 6 of whatever you'd call it (statute?), it says you're an unaccompanied immigrant if you have no legal immigration status, and have no parent legally in the country who can claim you. So, since the parents are being locked up too, then ALL kids crossing with parents are "unaccompanied". Right?

1) the term “placement” means the placement of an unaccompanied alien child in either a detention facility or an alternative to such a facility; and

(2) the term “unaccompanied alien child” means a child who--

(A) has no lawful immigration status in the United States;

(B) has not attained 18 years of age; and

(C) with respect to whom--

(i) there is no parent or legal guardian in the United States; or

(ii) no parent or legal guardian in the United States is available to provide care and physical custody.

The immigration statute defines who is a child in INA § 101(b)(1). Under the INA, a child is an unmarried person under age 21. Title 6 of the U.S. Code (“Domestic Security”) defines an "unaccompanied alien child" as a person who has no immigration status in the United States, is under the age of 18, and has no parent or legal guardian in the United States who is available to provide physical care and physical custody. 6 U.S.C. § 279(g)(2). Children without immigration status who enter the United States with a parent or other closely related adult are not considered to be unaccompanied children. The protections that accrue to unaccompanied children do not apply to those who enter the United States with a parent or closely related adult.

The age, at least, is contradictory, imo.

Sounds horrible, I know, but with all the tropical moisture drenching much of Texas and Mexico (and forecast for the next 2-3 days), a high pressure system over the prison camp means no torrential rain to wash them away or cause them to slop around in mud. Lord knows, they don't need any more bullshit!

Just saw a video of protesters in El Paso under a bright, hot sun and clear, blue sky.

Now, to get through the projected over 3 days, 7"-10" here. (And try not to read any fb comments laughing at people for being anxious or with post Harvey PTSD. I've read only ex military and females who've been raped can have PTSD. Ugh, people are so stupid, and hateful too.)

i hope that the high pressure system works as you anticipate and the rainfall is not nearly as bad as advertised.

stay safe and dry!

Sounds horrible, I know, but with all the tropical moisture drenching much of Texas and Mexico (and forecast for the next 2-3 days), a high pressure system over the prison camp means no torrential rain to wash them away or cause them to slop around in mud. Lord knows, they don't need any more bullshit!

Just saw a video of protesters in El Paso under a bright, hot sun and clear, blue sky.

Now, to get through the projected over 3 days, 7"-10" here. (And try not to read any fb comments laughing at people for being anxious or with post Harvey PTSD. I've read only ex military and females who've been raped can have PTSD. Ugh, people are so stupid, and hateful too.)

I wish people would reconsider this "Bernie is a sheepdog" stuff. Maybe I don't understand his strategy, maybe I disagree with his strategy, but to say that Sanders is a conscious fraud, that he is less than honest and therefore dishonorable is a charge that I am not prepared to make. There is nothing in his past, that I know of, to justify such a judgement.
Here's what Lambert Strether had to say when he linked Hedges' piece in his 2:00PM Water Cooler:

“Et Tu, Bernie?” [Chris Hedges, Truthdig]. I’m sympathetic to Hedges’ position but not very much; the Hedges’ wing is the very last place I’d look for a political strategist. “Paris is worth a mass,” and if Sanders is getting a million views on a #MedicareForAll Town Hall, then have at it, say I.

yep, i think that it is fair to draw a line at accusing sanders of bad faith. it is one thing to accuse him of bad strategy, bad tactics and maybe even being soft-headed - those all seem fair when (as hedges and others of sanders detractors do) backed up with facts and analysis. i don't think that there is clear and conclusive evidence that sanders intent is something other than to get himself elected.

that said, i have long been concerned about sanders' numerous deficits as a progressive, his softness for military spending and adventures, his failure to confront imperialism, etc. at this point, i am pretty sure that he is not a good choice for leadership going forward.

I wish people would reconsider this "Bernie is a sheepdog" stuff. Maybe I don't understand his strategy, maybe I disagree with his strategy, but to say that Sanders is a conscious fraud, that he is less than honest and therefore dishonorable is a charge that I am not prepared to make. There is nothing in his past, that I know of, to justify such a judgement.
Here's what Lambert Strether had to say when he linked Hedges' piece in his 2:00PM Water Cooler:

“Et Tu, Bernie?” [Chris Hedges, Truthdig]. I’m sympathetic to Hedges’ position but not very much; the Hedges’ wing is the very last place I’d look for a political strategist. “Paris is worth a mass,” and if Sanders is getting a million views on a #MedicareForAll Town Hall, then have at it, say I.

@joe shikspack
like so many of us are, and he's working within a system that he knows from long experience. If you're expecting him to call for an armed insurrection or sustained civil disobedience you will be disappointed. He has called for an audit of the DoD and a return to a congressional responsibility with regard to declaration of war. He has openly reminded congress and the American people about Mossadegh and other US regime-change operations.
Who else has done that ?
We owe him a debt of gratitude. It's up to us to take it from there.

yep, i think that it is fair to draw a line at accusing sanders of bad faith. it is one thing to accuse him of bad strategy, bad tactics and maybe even being soft-headed - those all seem fair when (as hedges and others of sanders detractors do) backed up with facts and analysis. i don't think that there is clear and conclusive evidence that sanders intent is something other than to get himself elected.

that said, i have long been concerned about sanders' numerous deficits as a progressive, his softness for military spending and adventures, his failure to confront imperialism, etc. at this point, i am pretty sure that he is not a good choice for leadership going forward.

If you're expecting him to call for an armed insurrection or sustained civil disobedience you will be disappointed.

i don't want an armed insurrection, nor do i want someone to "represent" me by calling for one.

look, i am completely willing to give sanders credit for what he's done. he has given worthy service in many ways, not the least of which is to destigmatise socialist economics and help a lot of people to recognize that something better than what we have is possible.

on the other hand, just because sanders has done these things doesn't mean that there isn't a better way to move forward than sanders' current plan of action or that it might not be appropriate to find new leadership.

#12.1
like so many of us are, and he's working within a system that he knows from long experience. If you're expecting him to call for an armed insurrection or sustained civil disobedience you will be disappointed. He has called for an audit of the DoD and a return to a congressional responsibility with regard to declaration of war. He has openly reminded congress and the American people about Mossadegh and other US regime-change operations.
Who else has done that ?
We owe him a debt of gratitude. It's up to us to take it from there.

yep, i think that it is fair to draw a line at accusing sanders of bad faith. it is one thing to accuse him of bad strategy, bad tactics and maybe even being soft-headed - those all seem fair when (as hedges and others of sanders detractors do) backed up with facts and analysis. i don't think that there is clear and conclusive evidence that sanders intent is something other than to get himself elected.

that said, i have long been concerned about sanders' numerous deficits as a progressive, his softness for military spending and adventures, his failure to confront imperialism, etc. at this point, i am pretty sure that he is not a good choice for leadership going forward.

@Azazello
Gotta link? There's another Border Patrol running over someone in the links below that story, too. Did I scroll past the video thinking it was an ad?

I wish people would reconsider this "Bernie is a sheepdog" stuff. Maybe I don't understand his strategy, maybe I disagree with his strategy, but to say that Sanders is a conscious fraud, that he is less than honest and therefore dishonorable is a charge that I am not prepared to make. There is nothing in his past, that I know of, to justify such a judgement.
Here's what Lambert Strether had to say when he linked Hedges' piece in his 2:00PM Water Cooler:

“Et Tu, Bernie?” [Chris Hedges, Truthdig]. I’m sympathetic to Hedges’ position but not very much; the Hedges’ wing is the very last place I’d look for a political strategist. “Paris is worth a mass,” and if Sanders is getting a million views on a #MedicareForAll Town Hall, then have at it, say I.